The Endless Steppe

Infobox Book |
name = The Endless Steppe
author = Esther Hautzig
cover_artist = Caroline Binch
country = U.S.
language = English
publisher = Puffin
release_date = 1968
media_type = Print Hardcover, Hardback & Paperback

The Endless Steppe (1968) is a book by Esther Hautzig, describing her and her family's exile to Siberia during the Second World War.

Overview

In 1941 Esther and her family were arrested by Russian troops and taken away from their home in Poland and transported to Siberia. On arrival, Esther's mother was forced to work in a gypsumGirl (Anne Frank's Diary), as both are non-fiction books dealing with a crime of WW2 told through the perspective of an adolescent Jewish girl. However, The Endless Steppe's background is much less well known and it has an infinitely happier outcome.

In 1941 young Esther Rudomin (as she was then) lives a charmed existence in the pretty town of Vilna in Poland. She's a somewhat spoiled only child living with her large extended family and her parents are wealthy and well-respected members of the Jewish community. Despite the Nazi invasion and the Soviet occupation of their region, to 10 year old Esther the war is something that ends at her garden gate. Then, one June day, Russian soldiers arrive at their house declaring the Rudomin's "capitalists and enemies of the people". Their house and valuables and seized and Esther, her father, mother and grandparents are packed into cattle cars and "relocated" to another part of the great and mighty Soviet Union, which turns out to be a forced labour camp in Siberia.

This first half of the book is the most vivid as Esther recalls the horrors of this insane world: the customary division of the healthy and weak that means Esther's grandfather is separated from the family and his subsequent death, the nightmarish two month train journey with nothing more than watery soup to sustain them, the disorientating arrival in the camp and backbreaking work in a gypsum mine that they are forced to do. Though she also describes the unexpected mercies that existed alongside it: the local children who smuggled food to the slave labourers at considerable danger to themselves, the amnesty at the request of Britain that allows the Poles to be released from the camp and move to Rubovsk, the nearby village and the kindness of the villagers, people with almost as little as the Rudomins, that enable them to survive their exile.

Eventually the Rudomin's move into a hut of their own, Esther is allowed to attend the local school and they start to piece together some semblance of a normal life. The rest of the book concerns their trials over the next few years: the unbearable cold in winter and equally unbearable heat in summer, the constant hunger, threat from the NKVD (fore-runners of the KGB) who view the Poles with suspicion, and the worry as Esther's father is sent to the front line to work as an engineer and Esther's remarkable mother and grandmother have to cope without him.

The Endless Steppe is a book of many ironies. The Rudomins go from privileged complacency where they rely on servants to do everything for them to a world where the growth of a potato plant can mean the difference between life and death. And Esther is forced to rely on making clothes for the few rich people of the village - the sort of people they'd have been if they were still in Poland - for the price of a bit of bread and milk. While she almost absorbs the harsh Soviet message of their exile feeling a perverse pride that: "the little rich girl of Vilna survived poverty as well as anyone else".

In essence The Endless Steppe is a tribute to the resilience of human spirit and especially the adaptability of youth as Esther marvels at the irony of her "little capitalist" singing the Internationale, learning Russian and eventually falling in love with the unique, unspoiled beauty of the steppe. So much than when the war ends and the Rudomin's are abruptly informed that they are to be returned to Poland, Esther doesn't want to leave, thinking of herself as belonging there - a Siberyaki. While the biggest irony running throughout the book but never stated explicitly until the end, is that totally unintentionally, the Russians did the Rudomins a massive favor by deporting them. As shown by the terrible fates of Esther's remaining family, if they'd still been in Poland when the Nazis took over Esther probably wouldn't have lived to write this book - "our exile saved our lives".

Despite all the horrors, The Endless Steppe is still an easy to read book as it is mostly written without hindsight, retaining the perspective of the adolescent Esther was then. (For a long time she feels that she to blame for their exile by stepping out of the house on her left foot- a definite unlucky omen.) This child's eye view gives it a freshness and immediacy lacking from other memoirs and it is a much recommended introduction to WW2 history for younger readers. Esther's concerns are typically about fitting in and making friends with the local children. While her obsession with owning a fufaika, a quilted jacket that was fashionable then, proves even in war and Siberia, teenage girls are the same world over.